Valeros

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Sovereign Court

James Jacobs wrote:

The reason these ages were corrected in the reprint is, as noted above, because they were errors. As early as the very first adventure for Pathfinder, Burnt Offerings, we have an aasimar whose age works as if she were human, and that's a pretty important element of the plot of that adventure. We've also got a tiefling in Council of Thieves who is pretty important to be someone who ages as fast as his human sister for story reasons. Up until this point, we hadn't said in print what their age categories were, and the assumption that they were identical to humans (or VERY CLOSE to huamns, at least) made for MUCH stronger stories than any other option.

When Advanced Race Guide first came out, the design team missed these bits of important information; we've since been working hard to bring the design team and the world team in closer cooperation so that the books all properly support each other, and this bit of errata is an example of that.

It's not needless meddling; it's a legitimate correction to bring the rules in sync with the story. In this case, a story that's been established for about a decade and is a fundamental part of one of our most-popular Adventure Paths. So if you prefer our "original content" (such as Rise of the Runelords/Burnt Offerings), then I'd hope you would understand why we made this change in the Advanced Race Guide reprint.

Alright, by that logic I understand the changed ages for Aaismars and Tieflings. But with the exception of a kind of minor NPC in Carrion Crown, I can't think of any Dhampirs that have been printed in any Paizo adventure. So what was the reasoning behind changing how the Dhampir age?

Sovereign Court

If I didn't know better, I'd say that Paizo is not a fan of fighters, considering how often we see Valeros getting beaten on in their pictures. ^.^

Regardless, this looks awesome, and I can't wait for it to launch. My group plans of running this as a kind of legacy game to Council of Thieves, seeing as we've already played through that AP.

Sovereign Court

You know, I've actually been giving this very question a lot of thought, though my worry actually comes from the PC side of the table. Allow me to elaborate.

I've got a dedicated group of friends that I've been gaming with for about 5 years now. We've run a number of adventures (Most Paizo, but some homebrews), alternating GMs as we see fit, and I've got a pretty solid understanding of how the players in my group handles other PCs keeping secrets.

The answer being, of course, that there ARE no secrets.

Seriously, my party members will straight-up spy on each other just to make sure that they know everything about the other PCs (I will admit, I did this as well during our Council of Thieves game). So my question becomes this; how can you make a Vigilante work if the rest of your group, or even just one person really, does everything in their power to find out about your secret identity?

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@Liam Warner

I've actually been giving that some thought myself.

For our Iron Gods game, I'm actually playing an Android (Very young, he's only been 'alive' for 2 years or so), so I've been trying to reconcile him killing other Androids while knowing that if he kills them, he also removes the possibility that they can Renew into a new person (Since, as I understand it, renewal is a conscious effort that an Android can do, though most wait till they are dying of old age to do so). Basically, I came up with this:

Whenever he defeats an enemy Android in combat, he's requested that out party's Oracle help him safe them (If they aren't beyond saving, and he's invested ranks in Heal so that he can stabilize them if she can't make it). After the fight, he'll bind them, and heal them with some form of magic to bring them back to consciousness.

At that point, he informs them that they are dead (He's not good aligned, so he has no qualms killing anyone who has attacked him or his allies) but that he has no desire to kill their 'children' (Any android soul that inhabits the body after they Renew) so he offers them a chance to Renew. If they accept, he takes the unconscious body back to Torch to stay with Khonnir until the new soul inhabits the body. If they decline, he kills them.

Now, I get that this is a pretty Grey area morally, seeing as forcing Renewal on another Android is monstrous (According to my GM), but I countered with the fact that he's not forcing them to do anything, merely offering them the chance to save whoever would come after them. Still, the end result is a prisoner dying, by their own hand or by his, so I absolutely wouldn't call it a good act.

Anyway, that's how I'm handling my Android, Atton, dealing with hostile Androids. If you've got any better ideas, or just want to weigh in on his method, I would certainly like to hear from you.

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Hah, Not gonna lie, my friend and I were just talking about this exact thing on the way to get food. We came up with pretty much what you guys did; i.e. that since Aldori Dueling Master (And my extension Dervish Dance) allow their respective weapons to count as piercing weapons for the purpose of qualifying for the Duelist's Precise Strike ability, it made sense for them to also allow a character to Qualify for the Swash-Buckler's Precise Strike ability.

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Matthew Downie wrote:
It's not that complicated to make a character who is virtually impervious to physical attacks. You mostly just need to spend a lot of money on it and buy those silly items like Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier, maybe a bit of Fighting Defensively too.

That's another problem I have with Pathfinder, but my dis-like for reliance on magical items is a subject for a different post.

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Helic wrote:
Because if it were easy for PCs to become unhittable, it would be equally easy to make NPCs that were unhittable. And when players can't hit their enemies, it stops being fun.

But it would make combat more... Epic isn't the right word, so I'll go with challenging. If you stop being able to just walk up to an enemy and whale on them with reasonable assurance that you'll hit, it changes up to combat tactics of parties and GM's alike. Instead of the Fighter of the group rushing in and power attacking his bum off, he might delay his action till he can flank with a friend, or attempt to attack from higher ground. If enemies aren't piss-easy to hit, it forces parties to actually work for their wins; which I view as a 100% positive result. From a player standpoint, fights become more involving and interesting if you are challenged by them, and as a GM it's fun to have fights that last longer than 18 seconds in game-time.

Alright, you face the final boss! It's over in 6 rounds of combat, meaning the actual fight took... 36 seconds. Wow. Talk about a thrilling climax, lol.

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So I have a bit of a reputation within my gaming group of building relatively unhittable characters, mostly in the form fighters, Monks, and most recently a Dervish Dancer bard. The thing I've noticed with all on my characters is this: it is actually pretty difficult and requires a lot of planning to build a good AC monkey, whereas building someone who dishes out a crap ton of damage it relatively easy.

I'll clarify. It seems like most class features and feats are geared toward doing more damage, or making it easier for you to do more damage. Power Attack, Deadly Aim, Weapon Focus and Specialization are a few examples. And most classes apply bonuses to you ability to attack, such as a Fighter's weapon Training, a Ranger's Favored Enemy and Combat Style feats, and a Barbarian's Rage. Now, there are a few classes that give you bonuses to AC ( Monk, a couple fighter Archetypes, the Stalwart Defender, and Duelist come to mind), but it seems that Damage is the name of the game.

I'm not hating on the system, by any means. I love Pathfinder, and it is quite gratifying to hit evil monsters really hard. I guess my point is this: As an active member of the SCA, I'm accustom to strapping on medieval armor with my fiends and whaling on each other, and my experience has taught me that is is always easier too defend than it is to attack. And I guess I don't see that in Pathfinder.

I understand why, I guess. No one has fun sitting around a table, rolling a few dice and saying "Yup, I missed. Again," all session. So I guess I've answered my own question, and now I'm just curious to see what other people think.

Thoughts?

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Never mind, found the answer to my second question.

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I got a question, and I haven't been able to track down an answer yet.

At 5th level, the Pistolero gets Pistol Training, but nothing I've seen says it gives up Gun Training. Does that mean you can choose Pistols for your gun training at 5th level and add Dexterity to Damage twice?

Also, do you need a hand free to reload a Fire arm?

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Hello, all! This is my first time posting to the boards, so I'm a bit nervous, but here we go!

A friend of mine if running low-magic custom Pathfinder game, and is imposing some fairly hefty penalties for character death. In response to this, I decided to build and Aldori Swordlord who focuses on fighting defensively and using Combat Expertise to jack up his Armor class. To that end, I've got a few questions.

1.) Can you both Fight Defensively AND use the Combat Expertise feat?

2.) Thinking about building into Crane style by 2nd level for the awesome bumps to Fighting Defensively. Thoughts?

3.) Does a dodge bonus to your AC apply to your CMD?